Reddit reviews At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor
We found 3 Reddit comments about At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
the untold skinny, presumbably, on how Pearl Harbor came about
If you want to know the details, I would highly recommend this book "At Dawn We Slept."
The answer is complicated. Some in the military were more suspicious than others. The primary reason they weren't too worried at Pearl Harbor was because the harbor is relatively shallow and protected. They believed any torpedoes dropped from the air would get embedded in the mud before they could climb back to the surface and propel themselves to the ships. This was the belief held in Japan too, until someone had the idea to modify them so that they wouldn't sink as much after the drop.
One US military officer had the idea to install torpedo nets just in case, but he somehow got on the bad side of FDR (on something completely unrelated) and was transferred before the nets could be installed. I wish I had more details, but I'm going from memory. I'll come back later to edit this with some details (such as names/rank).
In regards to the original post, one thing that's interesting about Pearl Harbor is the guy who formed the plan had received some of his education at Harvard years before the attack. He believed it was foolish to attack America (with the belief that Japan could not keep up with America in military industry), but that was what the politicians decided upon so he made the best plan that he could.
> Naval blockades (which are themselves an act of war) tend to do that, particularly to an island nation like Japan.
Source on this? As far as I know there was no naval blockade of Japan prior to the U.S. entry to the war. I'm in the middle of At Dawn We Slept and there's no mention of that.
I think I've read it in several places, but the first one that comes to mind is "At Dawn We Slept", a book I highly recommend if you want a detailed look at the events at Pearl Harbor. It's now known to have some really minor things wrong, but it's exceedingly detailed and well done given the information Prange had.
https://www.amazon.com/At-Dawn-We-Slept-Untold/dp/0140157344